Should I sue the acquirer of my startup and spend $100k to get $80k? (plus damages plus up to $400k in potential royalties)

I’m in a tough situation and I’d like some feedback from you guys.

I ran a company for 13 years and I sold it in 2022. It was a data science company and I sold it to a company in Canada.

Immediately after the acquisition things turned a bit sour. They said they ‘identified’ a problem and refused to pay their last month of services which was $32k. So immediately they got themselves a pocket discount.

They did full due diligence on the company and didn’t notice it before. At the time I was just happy that the acquisition went through and I was going through a divorce so I just wanted to move forward.

They withheld payments at the time until they were able to confirm that the service was working. They pre-paid $100k but when I fixed the issue they resumed payments.

The entire time they acted like they were doing me a favor paying out the promissory note.

About 8 months ago though they went silent and are basically ghosting me.

They owe me the remaining $80k on a promissory note and the royalties could be up to an additional $400k.

The problem is that the royalty payments in the past though were not significant and I should have probably pushed for more of a percentage or a minimum payout for the royalties.

I think if I get $100k from he royalties I’d be lucky.

I talked to a lawyer and she says that I can do the following:

• Give her a $5k retainer
• They will draft a demand letter explaining that the full value needs to be due and the full details of the case. This will cost $1-2k. The notice will say that we are going to pursue damages of $250k and that they will also have to pay legal costs of $100k.
• If they don’t reply to that they will draft a complaint and send them the draft. The draft will be like $2-4k

The problem here is that he could just ignore the complaint. I think they’re factoring in that I won’t spend $100k to settle a $80k debt.

The other thing I’m considering doing is documenting the entire thing for YouTube and putting him and the company on blast and calling him out and threatening to do so in the complaint.

Sure they could sue for defamation but those cases are hard to prove and stating FACTS is not defamation. It would cost me money to defend myself but it’s already money he doesn’t want to spend so I think this would just put more pressure on them to settle.

Another option is to get another quote for a less expensive lawyer. Apparently, it’s going to take 2 days in court but cost $100k. That seems a bit crazy to me.

tl;dr – previous startup owe me $80k. Should I spend $1-2k to send them a nasty demand letter. Maybe find a cheaper lawyer though? Maybe they will just give in and settle.