In a video made public today, but recorded sometime in the summer of 1985, Mitt Romney explains in frank terms how his then newly-minted private equity firm planned on making money.

"Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit," Romney tells employees of Bain & Company, the consulting firm that spawned the new venture.