I'm looking to learn from companies that were started in the last 2 - 3 years that are making at least $1 million a year but didn't take any outside funding.
You could try the Inc 5000 list:<p><a href="http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/the-full-list.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/the-full-list.html</a><p>It's not exactly what you want, as these companies will have been in business a little longer, but you can filter the list by earnings and number of employees to see some higher-earning small businesses from recent years.<p>For example, there's Logik, discussed here a couple of days ago:<p><a href="http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/company-profile.html?id=200901810" rel="nofollow">http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/company-profile.html?id=2009...</a><p>You might also try Mixergy, which has a bunch of profiles.
37Signals [Signal vs Noise blog] has a feature called "Bootstraped, Profitable, and Proud" latest is below, there is at least one more I've read.<p><a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2385-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-logik" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2385-bootstrapped-profitable-...</a>
I'm amazed you weren't able to get more responses to this, but after racking my brain it took a bit to come up with one.<p>How about Threadless? Though I can't seem to find anything that says when they were founded, I'd guess it's about 3 years, but could be more.<p>37 Signals didn't taking funding until after they were already successful, and of course they've been around for more than 3 years.