I got sued while I was a student in college (I will not promote)

When I was in college, I had a lot of fun app ideas but didn’t know how to code. This was around 2022-2023, when ChatGPT wasn’t great at coding yet. So I learned myself by joining professors' office hours, tutorials, courses, even cold emailing a Microsoft dev when I got stuck. Eventually I built my first MVP: a social media app with a specific purpose. It was bad, but I got a co-founder online. He lived in California, knew how to code, and I thought that was perfect for future investment opportunities. But he didn’t really care much. He was interning at Intel and working on other startups. He helped occasionally, even though I gave him 45% equity. Then I posted my journey on YouTube, one video blew up with 160K+ views, and we got 10K users in a couple months. That’s when he suddenly saw the potential. He said he could code more and told me to market more. But I kept coding more because he was busier. I was coding 3x more than him, fixing his bugs, building the algorithm, paying 100% of expenses personally, marketing on my personal YouTube, and later won a $10K grant from my university after pitching on stage. From my POV, I did more of everything. But I knew he contributed too, so I tried to make it work. But genuinely, it didn't work. He wanted to raise $500K+ and increase the company value “as high as possible.” I disagreed because: The app made $0. It was free and made for fun. He had no plan for the money. When I asked where we’d spend it, he said, “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to inflate a company with no concrete proof just to impress investors. We had 2K MAU at the moment. So I decided to break the partnership. I offered him $3,000 to sign a separation form. He agreed to sign but wanted $5,000. I explained the app made $0, I’d paid for everything, and I wasn’t getting paid either. Also, at the moment, I was paying $700 per month and if I paid him that much money, I wasn't going to have enough funds to experiment and monetize. This is the part that got controversial. Because our relationship was so bad, I was afraid he could disrupt the database or codebase. So I removed his access to the database and authentication for protection reason. I didn't delete his work or anything. But I wanted to make sure he wouldn't do something bad just because we disagreed with the price. Later, I got sued. He claimed I oppressed him, that he was the only technical contributor, and that without him the app couldn’t function. He told me to give up the entire business for $1. I couldn’t believe it. I was a senior in college. He had a full-time job at Intel. And this small fun app caused a civil lawsuit. They accused me of financial fraud, significant damage, oppression, and wrote a 20-page paper saying I’m a horrible person. I’m fighting it instead of giving up because I have concrete proof that what they claimed is a lie. (I literally had to eat one meal a day to save money to run this startup). I know this is only my side. But as the person with the original idea, who built the first MVP alone, coded 3x more, financed everything, and marketed it successfully on my personal Youtube channel, this lawsuit feels insane. The difference now: I’m working full-time on YouTube and this startup, losing money because of the lawsuit. He’s a full-time engineer at Intel and can pay his lawyers. And it’s still ongoing. So guys, be very careful who you partner with.