By 1980 Knuth was working with Hermann Zapf. So he was able to interest Zapf in his software essentially immediately. Knuth was a prestigious figure, so it's not a shock. Stanford students of typography and CS participated in the detailed production work on the font that was made with Zapf. It doesn't sound like funding was an issue.
Sure, bootstrapping the TeX project would have been a bit more difficult if a font designer had been required from the start; on the other hand, maybe Metafont would have been a more successful font design system if type designers had been (more?) involved from the outset.
"Zapf designed and drew the Euler alphabets in 1980–81 and provided critique and advice of digital proofs in 1983 and later. The typeface family is copyright by American Mathematical Society, 1983. Euler Metafont development was done by Stanford computer science and/or digital typography students; first Scott Kim, then Carol Twombly and Daniel Mills, and finally David Siegel, all assisted by John Hobby. Siegel finished the Metafont Euler digitization project as his M.S. thesis in 1985."
It's worth noting, more generally, that Knuth himself has described a realization that he gets better results from delegating tasks than from "going it alone":
"Some of you may recall that I wrote the entire
program for TEX78 and TEX82 all by myself, and
you may be wondering whether I’ve done the same
for iTeX. Don’t worry: This time around I’m having
the job done by people who know what they’re
doing. After many years I’ve finally come to realize
that my main strength lies in an ability to delegate
work and to lead large projects, rather than to go
it alone. Programming has never really been my
forté for example, I’ve had to remove 1289 bugs
from TEX, and 571 from METAFONT."
Sure, bootstrapping the TeX project would have been a bit more difficult if a font designer had been required from the start; on the other hand, maybe Metafont would have been a more successful font design system if type designers had been (more?) involved from the outset.
"Zapf designed and drew the Euler alphabets in 1980–81 and provided critique and advice of digital proofs in 1983 and later. The typeface family is copyright by American Mathematical Society, 1983. Euler Metafont development was done by Stanford computer science and/or digital typography students; first Scott Kim, then Carol Twombly and Daniel Mills, and finally David Siegel, all assisted by John Hobby. Siegel finished the Metafont Euler digitization project as his M.S. thesis in 1985."
It's worth noting, more generally, that Knuth himself has described a realization that he gets better results from delegating tasks than from "going it alone":
"Some of you may recall that I wrote the entire program for TEX78 and TEX82 all by myself, and you may be wondering whether I’ve done the same for iTeX. Don’t worry: This time around I’m having the job done by people who know what they’re doing. After many years I’ve finally come to realize that my main strength lies in an ability to delegate work and to lead large projects, rather than to go it alone. Programming has never really been my forté for example, I’ve had to remove 1289 bugs from TEX, and 571 from METAFONT."